Britain’s most jealous woman wants NHS to pay for surgery

“Britain’s Most Jealous Woman” to Get Taxpayer-Funded Lap Band Surgery

Debbi Wood became famous as “Britain’s most jealous woman” when she spoke to tabloids about her Othello Syndrome—a psychological disorder that causes sufferers to believe their partners are cheating on them—back in 2013. Now Wood, who says she regularly forces her fiancé to take lie detector tests, is getting a National Health Service-funded gastric band operation that she says will make her more confident in her man’s fidelity.

Wood, 43, wants to go from 290 pounds down to 150 to impress Steve Wood, the man who has already agreed to marry her even though it means constant surveillance of his phone and email and a ban on watching television shows with women in them. They’ve been engaged for two years, and she’s already taken his last name.

“I think he will be less likely to run away with someone else if he has a slim and pretty wife at home,” she told the Sun.

But the Woods are currently unemployed—she because of back pain caused by her weight, and he because he’s now her “full-time carer”—and living on disability and housing benefits, so they can’t afford the operation out of pocket. That’s where the National Health Service comes in, paying for the $3,800 procedure.

Having the NHS, funded by British taxpayers, pay for your surgery is reliable way to attract controversy in the U.K. Aspiring model” and professional troll Josie Cunningham became a regular tabloid fixture after she received a government-funded boob job in 2013, claiming her breast size was causing her emotional distress.

Although Debbi Wood once claimed that she thinks her delusional jealousy stems from “the pressure society puts on us to look a certain way—to be stick thin with blonde hair and big boobs,” Othello Syndrome is apparently a symptom of damage to the brain’s right frontal lobe, and is more of a neurological problem than a psychiatric one.

Wood is also bipolar and suffers from body dysmorphic disorder, though, which makes a much better explanation for the surgery, if not a better tabloid headline. And Wood’s operation might enable her to work again, which should be much more satisfying to angry NHS critics than Josie Cunningham’s boob job, which only enabled her to blatantly mock British taxpayers.